Alone, I awoke this morning in the room of someone I’d met just 36 hours before. I’d been connected to JC through a woman I’d met once at a Burning Man party last summer. Thankfully, travelers tend to look out for each other and freely offer crash space, even if it isn’t theirs.
I’d arrived in Cancun on Saturday night and made the 90 minute drive south to Tulum, passing kilometer after kilometer of one resort after another. However, as soon as I reached Tulum, it had a different feel – more like Pai, and less like, well, Cancun, the top of every spring break list.
I spent my first full day enjoying the beach at Playa El Mariachi, and my first cavern dive at Dos Ojos. While entirely awesome, that will be a different story. On a rather tight timeline for the week, I don’t have the leisure of staying in one place for long, so today I started off snorkeling at Gran Cenote, before heading off towards Chichen-Itza, stopping for lunch at a roadside ceviche stand.
I saw a sign mentioning Ek Balam, and decided to follow my map along smaller roads. Unfortunately, said map appeared to be a bit incomplete and outdated. I passed Yalcoba as expected, but ended up in Xtut rather than Dzalbay. Turning around, I came across a sign for Hunuku, but still had to stop a few times to ask locals the right way. Interestingly, this lostness wasn’t stressful in the slightest. There was still plenty of daylight left, and the scenery was beautiful. There were arches of beautiful red-leafed trees and rolling fields. I stopped to let a small herd of cows pass, and several iguanas played frogger across the road.
I finally arrived at Ek Balam at 4:50, only to be told that the gates closed at 4:30, and really, anytime after 4:00 since everyone gets kicked out at 5:00. But I took even this in stride. The day, much like this trip, is about the journey, not about the destination. Besides, a stranded tour guide needed a lift down the road to the next town, so clearly my purpose in showing up so late was to be his ride. Casimiro and I talked about local life and his desire to start a family as we made our way to Temozon.
Now I sit alone in Hotel Dolores Alba in the town of Piste, near Chichen-Itza, with plans to visit the ruins first thing in the morning before the tour buses arrive from Cancun, and then I shall try again to see Ek Balam, and either spend the night in Valladolid or return to Tulum, before returning to Cancun on Wednesday for the true purpose of this trip, to witness the Sacred Mayan Journey of hundreds of canoeists traveling from the mainland to Cozumel to hear the wisdom of the goddess Ix Chel.
It’s a cold rainy winter evening here in San Francisco.
I had planned to hang out with Spud, but after a long day I just wanted to go home to a lovingly made chicken tajine. Alas, even those plans were foiled when I arrived upon Fruitvale, my home BART station, to find that my bicycle’s rear wheel was stolen. And this after having had my front wheel on a different bike stolen last year. The fault is all mine, but it hurts nonetheless that this home of Oakland that I love so much would lash out at me so. Thankfully, the delicious stew soon warmed the spirit, and I relaxed into the acceptance of learning another life lesson – to use two locks. And since I’m not sitting in a book store in the Marina listening to Spud’s travel yarns, I’ll just have to tell one of my own.
Up on the earlier side to go to dim sum again, and was much busier. We sat in the street with Penny, and talked about Bali’s attitudes towards women. We got the egg custards today, and they were the best we’ve ever had. Went back to the 75, where we called into DYC’s house warming party. We were two heads on a wall in Berkeley, a video call from 16 hours in the future.
This was the beginning of my journal entry from Oct. 24th, just four months ago. We’d arrived in Penang a few days earlier, having taken an overnight “VIP” bus from Malacca that dropped us off in the middle of nowhere. We finally talked down a taxi driver who was genuinely helpful, and after saying that we could not afford his friend’s hotel, promptly took us to the Travellers Lodge, better known as simply ‘the 75‘.
The first thing that any Malaysian guidebook or traveler will tell you about Penang is that it is a food-lover’s paradise. Most of its culinary delights are found in Georgetown, on the northeast corner of the island. Our Chinatown guesthouse was conveniently situated near Little India, with the best that both worlds had to offer within easy walking distance.
Our introduction to real Indian food in Singapore only wet our appetite for more. On our first night, we found ourselves in the most upscale of Indian restaurants, as evidenced by their enclosed air-conditioned dining room and sizzling brownie sundae dessert. While the food was certainly very good by American standards, it wasn’t until we discovered a little hole in the wall a couple of nights later that our bar for Indian food was forever raised. Lured by a streetside dosai-maker, a tout pulled us into the waiting arms of Krsna where the chicken and potato dosai was crispy and flavorful.
Lest you think we limited ourselves to just Indian food, fear not. Not only did we enjoy dim sum almost every morning at the same restaurant with a fellow traveler, but we sampled our way around town, from one street cart to another. Our favorite vendor may have been the one on Kimberley Street that would serve up char koay teow to order. We watched as his practiced hands fed the coals and cooked up a stir fry in 49 seconds.
Then there’s ais kacang. On top of scoops of grass jelly threads, sweet corn, red beans, and palm fruit, build a mountain of shaved ice in a bowl. Then drizzle root beer and bubble gum syrups over it, and finally, a ladleful of evaporated milk. It’s actually pretty awesome. So wonderful, in fact, that it inspired an idea for a Burning Man art project, as you can see from the diagram in my notebook.
While Georgetown may not be the prettiest of destinations, it has its charm, and it has decent lodging and great food, to be had for a bargain. You can even catch Bollywood movies at the Veenai Odeon. We spent longer in town than we’d planned, deciding on where we were going next. Two weeks before the elections and Aung San Suu Kyi’s release , Burma seemed like a poor choice. The islands off the coast of peninsular Thailand seemed expensive. So after five days, we left Penang on two overnight trains to Laos, in the middle of which we cast our November election ballots electronically, from the internet room in the Bangkok station.
Mid-afternoon on November 13th, we arrived in Chiang Mai intending to stay for just a week, ostensibly so that Liz could take a massage class and we could be in town for the Loi Krathong festival. In fact, we had already purchased train tickets to Bangkok for the 22nd and plane tickets to Hanoi for the 23rd with plans to explore Vietnam. Five weeks later, we are still here, having received a 50% refund for the train tickets, and our airline seats left without us.
Needing a break from harrowing adventures and moving around every few days, we quickly found ourselves at home in Chiang Mai. It’s a very easy city, offering great food and lodging at all price points. There is a plethora of activities to choose from, such as massage and cooking classes, yoga, elephant riding and training, interacting with tigers, and both on- and off-road cycling. Street food costs less than $3 for two people, and an hour-long Thai massage can be had for only $4. The city is relatively small and easily navigable, and transport across town costs between $1 and $5. Its central location makes a great home base for exploring all of mainland Southeast Asia. Despite a large population of both transient and long-term foreigners, it retains its character, a modern Thai city with deep Lanna roots. It’s no surprise why it has moved up to the #2 spot in Travel & Leisure’s “Top 10 Cities” list (behind Bangkok).
Liz’ planned one week introduction to Thai massage at ITM turned into two, receiving her certification. After a week’s break, she continued her studies for two more weeks, delving deeper into body alignment and mechanics at RSM. I took a cooking class, explored south of Chiang Mai on a bicycle tour, and went on an overnight mountain biking trip along the Mae Taeng river valley. We played with tigers, spent two nights visiting Pai, and did two visa runs to Burma. I’ve had weekly straight-razor shaves, and we’ve both enjoyed many hours of massage.
We have met some exceptional people during our stay here. We’ve met ITM students from South Africa, Russia, Bulgaria, Italy, and Japan. Our home-away-from-home, WaLai House, has its own community, expanding outwards from the two proprietresses. We had a Thanksgiving party, and several nighttime outings spent dancing the night away to reggae and hip-hop. We’ve been blessed to become a part of Team Chiang Mai, a group of folks living in or just passing through the area. I’ve met two more Vagabonding Case Studies in person; Bessie & Kyle, and Inderjeet. We had dinner with the extraordinary archivist, Victoria Vorreiter, whom I had the pleasure of meeting earlier this summer.
Not surprisingly, food has been a highlight of our stay here. Noodle dishes such as Pad Thai are light years beyond what we’ve had in the U.S., and a new favorite is Pad Si Ew. Chiang Mai has its signature soup, Khao Soi. Of course there is also fried chicken, fried spring rolls, and pork balls. Fruit shakes (cantaloupe or honeydew and coconut being the best) and fresh guava, jackfruit, and mangosteen. And I could not forget my rotee addiction.
As you can see, there’s a lot to love about Chiang Mai. We already look forward to returning.
In half an hour, our first RTW will come to an end. A taxi will arrive to take us to the airport for our flight to Bangkok. Then we have a flight to New York, via Korea. Flying east across the dateline, we gain back the day we lost three months ago, and we arrive at JFK twenty minutes before we leave Seoul tomorrow morning. Tonight will be a very. long. night.
As I write this, we are somewhere between Mae Sai and Chiang Mai, having just renewed our Thai visas at the Burmese border again. This time we took the “Green Bus” in much more comfort than the minivan two weeks ago, and without the enforced shopping stops. Wasting another day with a visa run when we have only 5 days left before we fly home to the U.S. seems a bit silly, but it saves us over $100 in overstay fines. At least this time we had long enough to sit down and have some tea-leaf salad for lunch.
It’s almost hard to believe that we left home 80 days ago. Time being relative, it feels both forever ago that we were relaxing in our daybed on Gili Air, and just recently that we took a longtail boat through a cave in Kong Lor. Our feet have touched the ground on 6 countries, and we have slept in 18 towns. We’ve seen and missed so much, barely scratching the surface of these places we’ve visited. One thing is for sure – we will be coming back to Southeast Asia.
With our trip winding down, knowing that a week from now we will have traded hot and humid for the cold and dry of New York in winter, I find myself reflecting on the past and looking forward to the future. I already know some of the things that I will miss when we leave, such as;
Street food – The U.S. doesn’t know what it’s missing. There is so much more that could exist than hot dog carts and taco trucks. Whether koay teow in Penang, khao soi in Chiang Mai, or papaya salad in Thakhek, I will miss the plethora of food that can be found at simple street stalls.
Freedom – For a country founded on the concept of freedom, the U.S. feels restrictive in some ways, going out of its way to protect people against themselves. Street food, open-back songtheaws, launching flaming paper lanterns into the sky, and playing with tigers are all things that one regulation or another wouldn’t allow.
Cheap – Airfares aside, it is a financial win to be here over living in San Francisco where monthly expenses are in excess of $2000. Our average night’s lodging has been about $9. A cheap meal is less than $3, a splurge less than $20. We can rent a motorbike for $5/day, and a hired trip across town costs between $2 and $10.
Unbridled Exploration – Every day offers an opportunity to experience a new facet of a foreign land, to connect with people who speak a foreign tongue, and to solve simple problems in entirely foreign contexts. Of course, one can discover new things in their own backyard as well, and therein lies the challenge when returning home with a fresh perspective.
For all of the excitement found in exploring new places, meeting fellow travelers, and appreciating a different way of living, there is plenty to look forward to in returning home;
Family and friends – Unlike adventurers of even the recent past, we have managed to stay in contact with those we care about through Email, Facebook, Twitter, and Skype. In some sense, we have brought everyone along with us, which has helped sustain us during hard days. However, nothing virtual can replace hugs and laughter shared together.
Home – By the time we return to Oakland just before New Years, it will have been four and a half months since we slept in our own bed with our three cats vying for space around us. It will also be nice to have a larger clothing selection than 4 pairs of underwear, 2 pairs of shorts, and 4 shirts.
Cooking – Cheap street food has been great, but we miss going to the market and making our own food. Thankfully, we now have some new favorite dishes to try and recreate.
They say that all good things must come to an end. In so doing, they retain their specialness, set apart from the mundane and ordinary. Like night and day or good and evil, the normal and the exceptional serve to counterbalance one another, highlighting the inherent value of both.
When you travel, what differences do you appreciate? What comforts of home do you look forward to returning to?
Failing to arrange a 60-day Thai visa in either Malaysia or Laos, opting to save money by taking buses from Luang Prabang to Chiang Mai instead of flying (which would have provided us with extendable 30-day visas), and intending to stay in Thailand for several weeks meant that our visas would run out before we planned to leave the country.
With one day left on our visas, this meant that we needed to make what is affectionately called a “visa run“, or risk overstaying our visa and paying fines of $34/day. A straightforward process, it simply means traveling to a nearby country for a very short time in order to officially leave and then re-enter the desired country, resetting the visa clock. We traveled almost 15 hours in order to spend less than 15 minutes in Burma.
Rather than take the bus, we joined a tour by minivan that just happened to include a stop at Mae Sai, the Thai town across the river from Tachileik, Burma. Theoretically, for minimal additional expense, we would be picked up, travel in a more comfortable ride, with A/C, lunch, and a few tourist sights along the way. What we also found was confirmation that we really aren’t the packaged tour types of travelers, to no surprise.
Our first stop was the underwhelming Mae Kha Chan, a hot spring in the middle of a truck stop, surrounded by shops. Whether the geyser – constantly erupting – was natural or not is unclear, but the attraction are a couple of small pools where you can hard boil eggs. Buses and minivans arrived by the score, unloading tourists, which would set the theme for the day.
An hour later, we rolled into Wat Rong Khun, one of the most beautiful and creepy temples I’ve ever seen. Construction began in 1997, and while the structures are finished, the intricately hand-carved detailwork is ongoing. The entrance to the temple complex is guarded by red demons denouncing the earthly vices of smoking and drinking. The outside of the main assembly hall is blindingly white and covered in mirrors which are all cut and placed individually by hand in the nearby workshop, and the inside walls are covered in paintings. One enters the back wall through the mouth of a demon with flaming red eyes, the image of George Bush in the right, and Osama bin Laden in the left. The demon is surrounded by a crazy mix of modernity like spaceships, digital watches, and false idols such as Spiderman, Batman, Superman, and Keanu Reaves. The side walls have people fleeing on clouds towards the front wall of Buddha and enlightenment.
Our next attraction was Sop Ruak, where “the thousands of square miles of the opium growing region [the Golden Triangle] has been distilled down to a single point.” Once again, this was simply another stop on the tour and mini bus circuit, offering some semblance of interest wrapped in a neat little package. The highlights are getting one’s picture taken in front of a sign, and taking a longtail boat to the Laotian island of Don Sao, which doesn’t require a visa and offers duty free shopping.
Lunch was at a roadside buffet offering “international cuisine” such as chicken ala king, sweet & sour fish, pork & “sauerkraut”, and Burmese chicken & rice. We talked with our vanmates, including two Americans from Las Vegas who say they never eat street food.
Finally, we reached Mae Sai, yet another tourist shopping mecca. However, our goal was to cross over into Burma. Our tour guide escorted us through immigration control, as we were stamped out of thailand, walked across the bridge, and then stamped into Burma. Our passports held at the border, we spent 10 minutes walking down through the Burmese market, being offered cases of cigarettes, Saddam Hussein playing cards, knockoff phones, and copied DVDs. We turned around, retrieved our passports, walked back across the bridge, and got another 15-days in Thailand.
Our return trip to Chiang Mai had just one stop, an “Akha hill tribe village“. Once again, a parade of minivans pulled in to give tourists the chance to .. yes, you guessed it, shop. A half dozen stalls with women in traditional dress selling hats, bags, and jewelry. Sure, these were Akha women, living in a village, and they were selling handmade gifts. However, the village itself was across a small footbridge, blocked to outsiders. One can’t blame them for not wanting random farang walking through their homestead, but I’d hardly call the experience worthwhile.
We arrived back at our guest house three harrowing hours later, as the driver went very fast over twisty roads, in our minivan with crap suspension. We got what we had wanted out of the trip – our visas extended for another 15 days – as well as a glimpse into the life of a package tourist. This was both confusing and enlightening, wondering what our vanmates got out of the experience, and what kind of a cultural introduction such a tour really offers. It served as confirmation that we prefer to explore the world on our own. We might miss some sights – we would never have seen the creepy temple otherwise – but what we do see, and who we meet along the way, feels much more organic and natural.
What are your experiences of guided tours? Do you find them worthwhile? Disappointing? Enriching? Did you find a hidden gem, or just pitstops on the tourist circuit?
I’d arrived in Cancun on Saturday night and made the 90 minute drive south to Tulum, passing kilometer after kilometer of one resort after another. However, as soon as I reached Tulum, it had a different feel – more like Pai, and less like, well, Cancun, the top of every spring break list.
It’s almost hard to believe that we left home 
Our first stop was the underwhelming Mae Kha Chan, a hot spring in the middle of a truck stop, surrounded by shops. Whether the geyser – constantly erupting – was natural or not is unclear, but the attraction are a couple of small pools where you can hard boil eggs. Buses and minivans arrived by the score, unloading tourists, which would set the theme for the day.
Our next attraction was 
